[privoxy.git] / doc / text / developer-manual.txt

Privoxy Developer Manual

[ Copyright   2001-2007 by Privoxy Developers ]

$Id: developer-manual.sgml,v 2.13 2007/10/30 17:59:31 fabiankeil Exp $

The developer manual provides guidance on coding, testing, packaging,
documentation and other issues of importance to those involved with Privoxy
development. It is mandatory (and helpful!) reading for anyone who wants to
join the team. Note that it's currently out of date and may not be entirely
correct. As always, patches are welcome.

Please note that this document is constantly evolving. This copy represents the
state at the release of version 3.0.7. You can find the latest version of the
this manual at http://www.privoxy.org/developer-manual/. Please see the Contact
section on how to contact the developers.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction

    1.1. Quickstart to Privoxy Development

2. The CVS Repository

    2.1. Access to CVS
    2.2. Branches
    2.3. CVS Commit Guidelines

3. Documentation Guidelines

    3.1. Quickstart to Docbook and SGML
    3.2. Privoxy Documentation Style
    3.3. Privoxy Custom Entities

4. Coding Guidelines

    4.1. Introduction
    4.2. Using Comments

        4.2.1. Comment, Comment, Comment
        4.2.2. Use blocks for comments
        4.2.3. Keep Comments on their own line
        4.2.4. Comment each logical step
        4.2.5. Comment All Functions Thoroughly
        4.2.6. Comment at the end of braces if the content is more than one
            screen length

    4.3. Naming Conventions

        4.3.1. Variable Names
        4.3.2. Function Names
        4.3.3. Header file prototypes
        4.3.4. Enumerations, and #defines
        4.3.5. Constants

    4.4. Using Space

        4.4.1. Put braces on a line by themselves.
        4.4.2. ALL control statements should have a block
        4.4.3. Do not belabor/blow-up boolean expressions
        4.4.4. Use white space freely because it is free
        4.4.5. Don't use white space around structure operators
        4.4.6. Make the last brace of a function stand out
        4.4.7. Use 3 character indentions

    4.5. Initializing

        4.5.1. Initialize all variables

    4.6. Functions

        4.6.1. Name functions that return a boolean as a question.
        4.6.2. Always specify a return type for a function.
        4.6.3. Minimize function calls when iterating by using variables
        4.6.4. Pass and Return by Const Reference
        4.6.5. Pass and Return by Value
        4.6.6. Names of include files
        4.6.7. Provide multiple inclusion protection
        4.6.8. Use `extern "C"` when appropriate
        4.6.9. Where Possible, Use Forward Struct Declaration Instead of
            Includes

    4.7. General Coding Practices

        4.7.1. Turn on warnings
        4.7.2. Provide a default case for all switch statements
        4.7.3. Try to avoid falling through cases in a switch statement.
        4.7.4. Use 'long' or 'short' Instead of 'int'
        4.7.5. Don't mix size_t and other types
        4.7.6. Declare each variable and struct on its own line.
        4.7.7. Use malloc/zalloc sparingly
        4.7.8. The Programmer Who Uses 'malloc' is Responsible for Ensuring
            'free'
        4.7.9. Add loaders to the `file_list' structure and in order
        4.7.10. "Uncertain" new code and/or changes to existing code, use FIXME
            or XXX

    4.8. Addendum: Template for files and function comment blocks:

5. Testing Guidelines

    5.1. Testplan for releases
    5.2. Test reports

6. Releasing a New Version

    6.1. Version numbers
    6.2. Before the Release: Freeze
    6.3. Building and Releasing the Packages

        6.3.1. Note on Privoxy Packaging
        6.3.2. Source Tarball
        6.3.3. SuSE, Conectiva or Red Hat RPM
        6.3.4. OS/2
        6.3.5. Solaris
        6.3.6. Windows
        6.3.7. Debian
        6.3.8. Mac OSX
        6.3.9. FreeBSD
        6.3.10. HP-UX 11
        6.3.11. Amiga OS
        6.3.12. AIX

    6.4. Uploading and Releasing Your Package
    6.5. After the Release

7. Update the Webserver
8. Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests

    8.1. Get Support
    8.2. Reporting Problems

        8.2.1. Reporting Ads or Other Configuration Problems
        8.2.2. Reporting Bugs

    8.3. Request New Features
    8.4. Other

9. Privoxy Copyright, License and History

    9.1. License
    9.2. History

10. See also

1. Introduction

Privoxy, as an heir to Junkbuster, is a Free Software project and the code is
licensed under the GPL. As such, Privoxy development is potentially open to
anyone who has the time, knowledge, and desire to contribute in any capacity.
Our goals are simply to continue the mission, to improve Privoxy, and to make
it available to as wide an audience as possible.

One does not have to be a programmer to contribute. Packaging, testing,
documenting and porting, are all important jobs as well.

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1.1. Quickstart to Privoxy Development

The first step is to join the developer's mailing list. You can submit your
ideas, or even better patches. Patches are best submitted to the Sourceforge
tracker set up for this purpose, but can be sent to the list for review too.

You will also need to have a cvs package installed, which will entail having
ssh installed as well (which seems to be a requirement of SourceForge), in
order to access the cvs repository. Having the GNU build tools is also going to
be important (particularly, autoconf and gmake).

For the time being (read, this section is under construction), you can also
refer to the extensive comments in the source code. In fact, reading the code
is recommended in any case.

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2. The CVS Repository

If you become part of the active development team, you will eventually need
write access to our holy grail, the CVS repository. One of the team members
will need to set this up for you. Please read this chapter completely before
accessing via CVS.

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2.1. Access to CVS

The project's CVS repository is hosted on SourceForge. Please refer to the
chapters 6 and 7 in SF's site documentation for the technical access details
for your operating system. For historical reasons, the CVS server is called
ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net, the repository is called ijbswa, and the source
tree module is called current.

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2.2. Branches

Within the CVS repository, there are modules and branches. As mentioned, the
sources are in the current "module". Other modules are present for platform
specific issues. There is a webview of the CVS hierarchy at http://
ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net/ijbswa/, which might help with visualizing how these
pieces fit together.

Branches are used to fork a sub-development path from the main trunk. Within
the current module where the sources are, there is always at least one "branch"
from the main trunk devoted to a stable release series. The main trunk is where
active development takes place for the next stable series (e.g. 3.2.x). So just
prior to each stable series (e.g. 3.0.x), a branch is created just for stable
series releases (e.g. 3.0.0 -> 3.0.1 -> 3.0.2, etc). Once the initial stable
release of any stable branch has taken place, this branch is only used for
bugfixes, which have had prior testing before being committed to CVS. (See
Version Numbers below for details on versioning.)

At one time there were two distinct branches: stable and unstable. The more
drastic changes were to be in the unstable branch. These branches have now been
merged to minimize time and effort of maintaining two branches.

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2.3. CVS Commit Guidelines

The source tree is the heart of every software project. Every effort must be
made to ensure that it is readable, compilable and consistent at all times.
There are differing guidelines for the stable branch and the main development
trunk, and we ask anyone with CVS access to strictly adhere to the following
guidelines:

Basic Guidelines, for all branches:

  • Please don't commit even a small change without testing it thoroughly
    first. When we're close to a public release, ask a fellow developer to
    review your changes.

  • Your commit message should give a concise overview of what you changed (no
    big details) and why you changed it Just check previous messages for good
    examples.

  • Don't use the same message on multiple files, unless it equally applies to
    all those files.

  • If your changes span multiple files, and the code won't recompile unless
    all changes are committed (e.g. when changing the signature of a function),
    then commit all files one after another, without long delays in between. If
    necessary, prepare the commit messages in advance.

  • Before changing things on CVS, make sure that your changes are in line with
    the team's general consensus on what should be done.

  • Note that near a major public release, we get more cautious. There is
    always the possibility to submit a patch to the patch tracker instead.

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3. Documentation Guidelines

All formal documents are maintained in Docbook SGML and located in the doc/
source/* directory. You will need Docbook, the Docbook DTD's and the Docbook
modular stylesheets (or comparable alternatives), and either jade or openjade
(recommended) installed in order to build docs from source. Currently there is
user-manual, FAQ, and, of course this, the developer-manual in this format. The
README, AUTHORS, INSTALL, privoxy.1 (man page), and config files are also now
maintained as Docbook SGML. These files, when built, in the top-level source
directory are generated files! Also, the Privoxy index.html (and a variation on
this file, privoxy-index.html, meant for inclusion with doc packages), are
maintained as SGML as well. DO NOT edit these directly. Edit the SGML source,
or contact someone involved in the documentation.

config requires some special handling. The reason it is maintained this way is
so that the extensive comments in the file mirror those in user-manual. But the
conversion process requires going from SGML to HTML to text to special
formatting required for the embedded comments. Some of this does not survive so
well. Especially some of the examples that are longer than 80 characters. The
build process for this file outputs to config.new, which should be reviewed for
errors and mis-formatting. Once satisfied that it is correct, then it should be
hand copied to config.

Other, less formal documents (e.g. LICENSE) are maintained as plain text files
in the top-level source directory.

Packagers are encouraged to include this documentation. For those without the
ability to build the docs locally, text versions of each are kept in CVS. HTML
versions are also being kept in CVS under doc/webserver/*. And PDF version are
kept in doc/pdf/*.

Formal documents are built with the Makefile targets of make dok, or
alternately make redhat-dok. If you have problems, try both. The build process
uses the document SGML sources in doc/source/*/* to update all text files in
doc/text/ and to update all HTML documents in doc/webserver/.

Documentation writers should please make sure documents build successfully
before committing to CVS, if possible.

How do you update the webserver (i.e. the pages on privoxy.org)?

 1. First, build the docs by running make dok (or alternately make redhat-dok).
    For PDF docs, do make dok-pdf.

 2. Run make webserver which copies all files from doc/webserver to the
    sourceforge webserver via scp.

Finished docs should be occasionally submitted to CVS (doc/webserver/*/*.html)
so that those without the ability to build them locally, have access to them if
needed. This is especially important just prior to a new release! Please do
this after the $VERSION and other release specific data in configure.in has
been updated (this is done just prior to a new release).

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3.1. Quickstart to Docbook and SGML

If you are not familiar with SGML, it is a markup language similar to HTML.
Actually, not a mark up language per se, but a language used to define markup
languages. In fact, HTML is an SGML application. Both will use "tags" to format
text and other content. SGML tags can be much more varied, and flexible, but do
much of the same kinds of things. The tags, or "elements", are definable in
SGML. There is no set "standards". Since we are using Docbook, our tags are
those that are defined by Docbook. Much of how the finish document is rendered
is determined by the "stylesheets". The stylesheets determine how each tag gets
translated to HTML, or other formats.

Tags in Docbook SGML need to be always "closed". If not, you will likely
generate errors. Example: <title>My Title</title>. They are also
case-insensitive, but we strongly suggest using all lower case. This keeps
compatibility with [Docbook] XML.

Our documents use "sections" for the most part. Sections will be processed into
HTML headers (e.g. h1 for sect1). The Docbook stylesheets will use these to
also generate the Table of Contents for each doc. Our TOC's are set to a depth
of three. Meaning sect1, sect2, and sect3 will have TOC entries, but sect4 will
not. Each section requires a <title> element, and at least one <para>. There is
a limit of five section levels in Docbook, but generally three should be
sufficient for our purposes.

Some common elements that you likely will use:

<para></para>, paragraph delimiter. Most text needs to be within paragraph
elements (there are some exceptions).
<emphasis></emphasis>, the stylesheets make this italics.
<filename></filename>, files and directories.
<command></command>, command examples.
<literallayout></literallayout>, like <pre>, more or less.
<itemizedlist></itemizedlist>, list with bullets.
<listitem></listitem>, member of the above.
<screen></screen>, screen output, implies <literallayout>.
<ulink url="example.com"></ulink>, like HTML <a> tag.
<quote></quote>, for, doh, quoting text.

Look at any of the existing docs for examples of all these and more.

You might also find "Writing Documentation Using DocBook - A Crash Course"
useful.

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3.2. Privoxy Documentation Style

It will be easier if everyone follows a similar writing style. This just makes
it easier to read what someone else has written if it is all done in a similar
fashion.

Here it is:

  • All tags should be lower case.

  • Tags delimiting a block of text (even small blocks) should be on their own
    line. Like:

     <para>
      Some text goes here.
     </para>
           

    Tags marking individual words, or few words, should be in-line:

      Just to <emphasis>emphasize</emphasis>, some text goes here.
           

  • Tags should be nested and step indented for block text like: (except
    in-line tags)

     <para>
      <itemizedlist>
       <para>
        <listitem>
          Some text goes here in our list example.
         </listitem>
       </para>
      </itemizedlist>
     </para>
           

    This makes it easier to find the text amongst the tags ;-)

  • Use white space to separate logical divisions within a document, like
    between sections. Running everything together consistently makes it harder
    to read and work on.

  • Do not hesitate to make comments. Comments can either use the <comment>
    element, or the <!-- --> style comment familiar from HTML. (Note in Docbook
    v4.x <comment> is replaced by <remark>.)

  • We have an international audience. Refrain from slang, or English
    idiosyncrasies (too many to list :). Humor also does not translate well
    sometimes.

  • Try to keep overall line lengths in source files to 80 characters or less
    for obvious reasons. This is not always possible, with lengthy URLs for
    instance.

  • Our documents are available in differing formats. Right now, they are just
    plain text, HTML, and PDF, but others are always a future possibility. Be
    careful with URLs (<ulink>), and avoid this mistake:

    My favorite site is <ulink url="http://example.com">here</ulink>.

    This will render as "My favorite site is here", which is not real helpful
    in a text doc. Better like this:

    My favorite site is <ulink url="http://example.com">example.com</ulink>.

  • All documents should be spell checked occasionally. aspell can check SGML
    with the -H option. (ispell I think too.)

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3.3. Privoxy Custom Entities

Privoxy documentation is using a number of customized "entities" to facilitate
documentation maintenance.

We are using a set of "boilerplate" files with generic text, that is used by
multiple docs. This way we can write something once, and use it repeatedly
without having to re-write the same content over and over again. If editing
such a file, keep in mind that it should be generic. That is the purpose; so it
can be used in varying contexts without additional modifications.

We are also using what Docbook calls "internal entities". These are like
variables in programming. Well, sort of. For instance, we have the p-version
entity that contains the current Privoxy version string. You are strongly
encouraged to use these where possible. Some of these obviously require
re-setting with each release (done by the Makefile). A sampling of custom
entities are listed below. See any of the main docs for examples.

  • Re- "boilerplate" text entities are defined like:

    <!entity supported SYSTEM "supported.sgml">

    In this example, the contents of the file, supported.sgml is available for
    inclusion anywhere in the doc. To make this happen, just reference the now
    defined entity: &supported; (starts with an ampersand and ends with a
    semi-colon), and the contents will be dumped into the finished doc at that
    point.

  • Commonly used "internal entities":

    p-version: the Privoxy version string, e.g. "3.0.7".
    p-status: the project status, either "alpha", "beta", or "stable".
    p-not-stable: use to conditionally include text in "not stable" releases
    (e.g. "beta").
    p-stable: just the opposite.
    p-text: this doc is only generated as text.

There are others in various places that are defined for a specific purpose.
Read the source!

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4. Coding Guidelines

4.1. Introduction

This set of standards is designed to make our lives easier. It is developed
with the simple goal of helping us keep the "new and improved Privoxy"
consistent and reliable. Thus making maintenance easier and increasing chances
of success of the project.

And that of course comes back to us as individuals. If we can increase our
development and product efficiencies then we can solve more of the request for
changes/improvements and in general feel good about ourselves. ;->

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4.2. Using Comments

4.2.1. Comment, Comment, Comment

Explanation:

Comment as much as possible without commenting the obvious. For example do not
comment "variable_a is equal to variable_b". Instead explain why variable_a
should be equal to the variable_b. Just because a person can read code does not
mean they will understand why or what is being done. A reader may spend a lot
more time figuring out what is going on when a simple comment or explanation
would have prevented the extra research. Please help your brother IJB'ers out!

The comments will also help justify the intent of the code. If the comment
describes something different than what the code is doing then maybe a
programming error is occurring.

Example:

/* if page size greater than 1k ... */
if ( page_length() > 1024 )
{
    ... "block" the page up ...
}

/* if page size is small, send it in blocks */
if ( page_length() > 1024 )
{
    ... "block" the page up ...
}

This demonstrates 2 cases of "what not to do".  The first is a
"syntax comment".  The second is a comment that does not fit what
is actually being done.


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4.2.2. Use blocks for comments

Explanation:

Comments can help or they can clutter. They help when they are differentiated
from the code they describe. One line comments do not offer effective
separation between the comment and the code. Block identifiers do, by
surrounding the code with a clear, definable pattern.

Example:

/*********************************************************************
 * This will stand out clearly in your code!
 *********************************************************************/
if ( this_variable == that_variable )
{
   do_something_very_important();
}


/* unfortunately, this may not */
if ( this_variable == that_variable )
{
   do_something_very_important();
}


if ( this_variable == that_variable ) /* this may not either */
{
   do_something_very_important();
}


Exception:

If you are trying to add a small logic comment and do not wish to "disrupt" the
flow of the code, feel free to use a 1 line comment which is NOT on the same
line as the code.

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4.2.3. Keep Comments on their own line

Explanation:

It goes back to the question of readability. If the comment is on the same line
as the code it will be harder to read than the comment that is on its own line.

There are three exceptions to this rule, which should be violated freely and
often: during the definition of variables, at the end of closing braces, when
used to comment parameters.

Example:

/*********************************************************************
 * This will stand out clearly in your code,
 * But the second example won't.
 *********************************************************************/
if ( this_variable == this_variable )
{
   do_something_very_important();
}

if ( this_variable == this_variable ) /*can you see me?*/
{
   do_something_very_important(); /*not easily*/
}


/*********************************************************************
 * But, the encouraged exceptions:
 *********************************************************************/
int urls_read     = 0;     /* # of urls read + rejected */
int urls_rejected = 0;     /* # of urls rejected */

if ( 1 == X )
{
   do_something_very_important();
}


short do_something_very_important(
   short firstparam,   /* represents something */
   short nextparam     /* represents something else */ )
{
   ...code here...

}   /* -END- do_something_very_important */


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.2.4. Comment each logical step

Explanation:

Logical steps should be commented to help others follow the intent of the
written code and comments will make the code more readable.

If you have 25 lines of code without a comment, you should probably go back
into it to see where you forgot to put one.

Most "for", "while", "do", etc... loops _probably_ need a comment. After all,
these are usually major logic containers.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.2.5. Comment All Functions Thoroughly

Explanation:

A reader of the code should be able to look at the comments just prior to the
beginning of a function and discern the reason for its existence and the
consequences of using it. The reader should not have to read through the code
to determine if a given function is safe for a desired use. The proper
information thoroughly presented at the introduction of a function not only
saves time for subsequent maintenance or debugging, it more importantly aids in
code reuse by allowing a user to determine the safety and applicability of any
function for the problem at hand. As a result of such benefits, all functions
should contain the information presented in the addendum section of this
document.

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4.2.6. Comment at the end of braces if the content is more than one screen
length

Explanation:

Each closing brace should be followed on the same line by a comment that
describes the origination of the brace if the original brace is off of the
screen, or otherwise far away from the closing brace. This will simplify the
debugging, maintenance, and readability of the code.

As a suggestion , use the following flags to make the comment and its brace
more readable:

use following a closing brace: } /* -END- if() or while () or etc... */

Example:

if ( 1 == X )
{
   do_something_very_important();
   ...some long list of commands...
} /* -END- if x is 1 */

or:

if ( 1 == X )
{
   do_something_very_important();
   ...some long list of commands...
} /* -END- if ( 1 == X ) */


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.3. Naming Conventions

4.3.1. Variable Names

Explanation:

Use all lowercase, and separate words via an underscore ('_'). Do not start an
identifier with an underscore. (ANSI C reserves these for use by the compiler
and system headers.) Do not use identifiers which are reserved in ANSI C++.
(E.g. template, class, true, false, ...). This is in case we ever decide to
port Privoxy to C++.

Example:

int ms_iis5_hack = 0;


Instead of:

int msiis5hack = 0; int msIis5Hack = 0;


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.3.2. Function Names

Explanation:

Use all lowercase, and separate words via an underscore ('_'). Do not start an
identifier with an underscore. (ANSI C reserves these for use by the compiler
and system headers.) Do not use identifiers which are reserved in ANSI C++.
(E.g. template, class, true, false, ...). This is in case we ever decide to
port Privoxy to C++.

Example:

int load_some_file( struct client_state *csp )


Instead of:

int loadsomefile( struct client_state *csp )
int loadSomeFile( struct client_state *csp )


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.3.3. Header file prototypes

Explanation:

Use a descriptive parameter name in the function prototype in header files. Use
the same parameter name in the header file that you use in the c file.

Example:

(.h) extern int load_aclfile( struct client_state *csp );
(.c) int load_aclfile( struct client_state *csp )


Instead of:

(.h) extern int load_aclfile( struct client_state * ); or
(.h) extern int load_aclfile();
(.c) int load_aclfile( struct client_state *csp )


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.3.4. Enumerations, and #defines

Explanation:

Use all capital letters, with underscores between words. Do not start an
identifier with an underscore. (ANSI C reserves these for use by the compiler
and system headers.)

Example:

(enumeration) : enum Boolean { FALSE, TRUE };
(#define) : #define DEFAULT_SIZE 100;


Note: We have a standard naming scheme for #defines that toggle a feature in
the preprocessor: FEATURE_>, where > is a short (preferably 1 or 2 word)
description.

Example:

#define FEATURE_FORCE 1

#ifdef FEATURE_FORCE
#define FORCE_PREFIX blah
#endif /* def FEATURE_FORCE */


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.3.5. Constants

Explanation:

Spell common words out entirely (do not remove vowels).

Use only widely-known domain acronyms and abbreviations. Capitalize all letters
of an acronym.

Use underscore (_) to separate adjacent acronyms and abbreviations. Never
terminate a name with an underscore.

Example:

#define USE_IMAGE_LIST 1


Instead of:

#define USE_IMG_LST 1 or
#define _USE_IMAGE_LIST 1 or
#define USE_IMAGE_LIST_ 1 or
#define use_image_list 1 or
#define UseImageList 1


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4.4. Using Space

4.4.1. Put braces on a line by themselves.

Explanation:

The brace needs to be on a line all by itself, not at the end of the statement.
Curly braces should line up with the construct that they're associated with.
This practice makes it easier to identify the opening and closing braces for a
block.

Example:

if ( this == that )
{
   ...
}


Instead of:

if ( this == that ) { ... }

or

if ( this == that ) { ... }

Note: In the special case that the if-statement is inside a loop, and it is
trivial, i.e. it tests for a condition that is obvious from the purpose of the
block, one-liners as above may optically preserve the loop structure and make
it easier to read.

Status: developer-discretion.

Example exception:

while ( more lines are read )
{
   /* Please document what is/is not a comment line here */
   if ( it's a comment ) continue;

   do_something( line );
}


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.4.2. ALL control statements should have a block

Explanation:

Using braces to make a block will make your code more readable and less prone
to error. All control statements should have a block defined.

Example:

if ( this == that )
{
   do_something();
   do_something_else();
}


Instead of:

if ( this == that ) do_something(); do_something_else();

or

if ( this == that ) do_something();

Note: The first example in "Instead of" will execute in a manner other than
that which the developer desired (per indentation). Using code braces would
have prevented this "feature". The "explanation" and "exception" from the point
above also applies.

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4.4.3. Do not belabor/blow-up boolean expressions

Example:

structure->flag = ( condition );


Instead of:

if ( condition ) { structure->flag = 1; } else { structure->flag = 0; }

Note: The former is readable and concise. The later is wordy and inefficient.
Please assume that any developer new to the project has at least a "good"
knowledge of C/C++. (Hope I do not offend by that last comment ... 8-)

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4.4.4. Use white space freely because it is free

Explanation:

Make it readable. The notable exception to using white space freely is listed
in the next guideline.

Example:

int first_value   = 0;
int some_value    = 0;
int another_value = 0;
int this_variable = 0;

if ( this_variable == this_variable )

first_value = old_value + ( ( some_value - another_value ) - whatever )


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4.4.5. Don't use white space around structure operators

Explanation:

- structure pointer operator ( "->" ) - member operator ( "." ) - functions and
parentheses

It is a general coding practice to put pointers, references, and function
parentheses next to names. With spaces, the connection between the object and
variable/function name is not as clear.

Example:

a_struct->a_member;
a_struct.a_member;
function_name();


Instead of: a_struct -> a_member; a_struct . a_member; function_name ();

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4.4.6. Make the last brace of a function stand out

Example:

int function1( ... )
{
   ...code...
   return( ret_code );

}   /* -END- function1 */


int function2( ... )
{
}   /* -END- function2 */


Instead of:

int function1( ... ) { ...code... return( ret_code ); } int function2( ... ) {
}

Note: Use 1 blank line before the closing brace and 2 lines afterward. This
makes the end of function standout to the most casual viewer. Although function
comments help separate functions, this is still a good coding practice. In
fact, I follow these rules when using blocks in "for", "while", "do" loops, and
long if {} statements too. After all whitespace is free!

Status: developer-discretion on the number of blank lines. Enforced is the end
of function comments.

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4.4.7. Use 3 character indentions

Explanation:

If some use 8 character TABs and some use 3 character TABs, the code can look
*very* ragged. So use 3 character indentions only. If you like to use TABs,
pass your code through a filter such as "expand -t3" before checking in your
code.

Example:

static const char * const url_code_map[256] =
{
   NULL, ...
};


int function1( ... )
{
   if ( 1 )
   {
      return( ALWAYS_TRUE );
   }
   else
   {
      return( HOW_DID_YOU_GET_HERE );
   }

   return( NEVER_GETS_HERE );

}


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.5. Initializing

4.5.1. Initialize all variables

Explanation:

Do not assume that the variables declared will not be used until after they
have been assigned a value somewhere else in the code. Remove the chance of
accidentally using an unassigned variable.

Example:

short a_short = 0;
float a_float  = 0;
struct *ptr = NULL;


Note: It is much easier to debug a SIGSEGV if the message says you are trying
to access memory address 00000000 and not 129FA012; or array_ptr[20] causes a
SIGSEV vs. array_ptr[0].

Status: developer-discretion if and only if the variable is assigned a value
"shortly after" declaration.

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4.6. Functions

4.6.1. Name functions that return a boolean as a question.

Explanation:

Value should be phrased as a question that would logically be answered as a
true or false statement

Example:

should_we_block_this();
contains_an_image();
is_web_page_blank();


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.6.2. Always specify a return type for a function.

Explanation:

The default return for a function is an int. To avoid ambiguity, create a
return for a function when the return has a purpose, and create a void return
type if the function does not need to return anything.

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4.6.3. Minimize function calls when iterating by using variables

Explanation:

It is easy to write the following code, and a clear argument can be made that
the code is easy to understand:

Example:

for ( size_t cnt = 0; cnt < block_list_length(); cnt++ )
{
   ....
}


Note: Unfortunately, this makes a function call for each and every iteration.
This increases the overhead in the program, because the compiler has to look up
the function each time, call it, and return a value. Depending on what occurs
in the block_list_length() call, it might even be creating and destroying
structures with each iteration, even though in each case it is comparing "cnt"
to the same value, over and over. Remember too - even a call to
block_list_length() is a function call, with the same overhead.

Instead of using a function call during the iterations, assign the value to a
variable, and evaluate using the variable.

Example:

size_t len = block_list_length();

for ( size_t cnt = 0; cnt < len; cnt++ )
{
   ....
}


Exceptions: if the value of block_list_length() *may* change or could
*potentially* change, then you must code the function call in the for/while
loop.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.6.4. Pass and Return by Const Reference

Explanation:

This allows a developer to define a const pointer and call your function. If
your function does not have the const keyword, we may not be able to use your
function. Consider strcmp, if it were defined as: extern int strcmp( char *s1,
char *s2 );

I could then not use it to compare argv's in main: int main( int argc, const
char *argv[] ) { strcmp( argv[0], "privoxy" ); }

Both these pointers are *const*! If the c runtime library maintainers do it, we
should too.

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4.6.5. Pass and Return by Value

Explanation:

Most structures cannot fit onto a normal stack entry (i.e. they are not 4 bytes
or less). Aka, a function declaration like: int load_aclfile( struct
client_state csp )

would not work. So, to be consistent, we should declare all prototypes with
"pass by value": int load_aclfile( struct client_state *csp )

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4.6.6. Names of include files

Explanation:

Your include statements should contain the file name without a path. The path
should be listed in the Makefile, using -I as processor directive to search the
indicated paths. An exception to this would be for some proprietary software
that utilizes a partial path to distinguish their header files from system or
other header files.

Example:

#include <iostream.h>     /* This is not a local include */
#include "config.h"       /* This IS a local include */


Exception:

/* This is not a local include, but requires a path element. */
#include <sys/fileName.h>


Note: Please! do not add "-I." to the Makefile without a _very_ good reason.
This duplicates the #include "file.h" behavior.

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4.6.7. Provide multiple inclusion protection

Explanation:

Prevents compiler and linker errors resulting from redefinition of items.

Wrap each header file with the following syntax to prevent multiple inclusions
of the file. Of course, replace PROJECT_H with your file name, with "." Changed
to "_", and make it uppercase.

Example:

#ifndef PROJECT_H_INCLUDED
#define PROJECT_H_INCLUDED
 ...
#endif /* ndef PROJECT_H_INCLUDED */


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4.6.8. Use `extern "C"` when appropriate

Explanation:

If our headers are included from C++, they must declare our functions as
`extern "C"`. This has no cost in C, but increases the potential re-usability
of our code.

Example:

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C"
{
#endif /* def __cplusplus */

... function definitions here ...

#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif /* def __cplusplus */


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4.6.9. Where Possible, Use Forward Struct Declaration Instead of Includes

Explanation:

Useful in headers that include pointers to other struct's. Modifications to
excess header files may cause needless compiles.

Example:

/*********************************************************************
 * We're avoiding an include statement here!
 *********************************************************************/
struct file_list;
extern file_list *xyz;


Note: If you declare "file_list xyz;" (without the pointer), then including the
proper header file is necessary. If you only want to prototype a pointer,
however, the header file is unnecessary.

Status: Use with discretion.

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4.7. General Coding Practices

4.7.1. Turn on warnings

Explanation

Compiler warnings are meant to help you find bugs. You should turn on as many
as possible. With GCC, the switch is "-Wall". Try and fix as many warnings as
possible.

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4.7.2. Provide a default case for all switch statements

Explanation:

What you think is guaranteed is never really guaranteed. The value that you
don't think you need to check is the one that someday will be passed. So, to
protect yourself from the unknown, always have a default step in a switch
statement.

Example:

switch( hash_string( cmd ) )
{
   case hash_actions_file :
      ... code ...
      break;

   case hash_confdir :
      ... code ...
      break;

   default :
      log_error( ... );
      ... anomaly code goes here ...
      continue; / break; / exit( 1 ); / etc ...

} /* end switch( hash_string( cmd ) ) */


Note: If you already have a default condition, you are obviously exempt from
this point. Of note, most of the WIN32 code calls `DefWindowProc' after the
switch statement. This API call *should* be included in a default statement.

Another Note: This is not so much a readability issue as a robust programming
issue. The "anomaly code goes here" may be no more than a print to the STDERR
stream (as in load_config). Or it may really be an abort condition.

Status: Programmer discretion is advised.

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4.7.3. Try to avoid falling through cases in a switch statement.

Explanation:

In general, you will want to have a 'break' statement within each 'case' of a
switch statement. This allows for the code to be more readable and
understandable, and furthermore can prevent unwanted surprises if someone else
later gets creative and moves the code around.

The language allows you to plan the fall through from one case statement to
another simply by omitting the break statement within the case statement. This
feature does have benefits, but should only be used in rare cases. In general,
use a break statement for each case statement.

If you choose to allow fall through, you should comment both the fact of the
fall through and reason why you felt it was necessary.

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4.7.4. Use 'long' or 'short' Instead of 'int'

Explanation:

On 32-bit platforms, int usually has the range of long. On 16-bit platforms,
int has the range of short.

Status: open-to-debate. In the case of most FSF projects (including X/
GNU-Emacs), there are typedefs to int4, int8, int16, (or equivalence ... I
forget the exact typedefs now). Should we add these to IJB now that we have a
"configure" script?

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4.7.5. Don't mix size_t and other types

Explanation:

The type of size_t varies across platforms. Do not make assumptions about
whether it is signed or unsigned, or about how long it is. Do not compare a
size_t against another variable of a different type (or even against a
constant) without casting one of the values.

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4.7.6. Declare each variable and struct on its own line.

Explanation:

It can be tempting to declare a series of variables all on one line. Don't.

Example:

long a = 0;
long b = 0;
long c = 0;


Instead of:

long a, b, c;

Explanation: - there is more room for comments on the individual variables -
easier to add new variables without messing up the original ones - when
searching on a variable to find its type, there is less clutter to "visually"
eliminate

Exceptions: when you want to declare a bunch of loop variables or other trivial
variables; feel free to declare them on one line. You should, although, provide
a good comment on their functions.

Status: developer-discretion.

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4.7.7. Use malloc/zalloc sparingly

Explanation:

Create a local struct (on the stack) if the variable will live and die within
the context of one function call.

Only "malloc" a struct (on the heap) if the variable's life will extend beyond
the context of one function call.

Example:

If a function creates a struct and stores a pointer to it in a
list, then it should definitely be allocated via `malloc'.


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4.7.8. The Programmer Who Uses 'malloc' is Responsible for Ensuring 'free'

Explanation:

If you have to "malloc" an instance, you are responsible for insuring that the
instance is `free'd, even if the deallocation event falls within some other
programmer's code. You are also responsible for ensuring that deletion is
timely (i.e. not too soon, not too late). This is known as "low-coupling" and
is a "good thing (tm)". You may need to offer a free/unload/destructor type
function to accommodate this.

Example:

int load_re_filterfile( struct client_state *csp ) { ... }
static void unload_re_filterfile( void *f ) { ... }


Exceptions:

The developer cannot be expected to provide `free'ing functions for C run-time
library functions ... such as `strdup'.

Status: developer-discretion. The "main" use of this standard is for allocating
and freeing data structures (complex or nested).

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4.7.9. Add loaders to the `file_list' structure and in order

Explanation:

I have ordered all of the "blocker" file code to be in alpha order. It is
easier to add/read new blockers when you expect a certain order.

Note: It may appear that the alpha order is broken in places by POPUP tests
coming before PCRS tests. But since POPUPs can also be referred to as
KILLPOPUPs, it is clear that it should come first.

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4.7.10. "Uncertain" new code and/or changes to existing code, use FIXME or XXX

Explanation:

If you have enough confidence in new code or confidence in your changes, but
are not *quite* sure of the repercussions, add this:

/* FIXME: this code has a logic error on platform XYZ, * attempting to fix */ #
ifdef PLATFORM ...changed code here... #endif

or:

/* FIXME: I think the original author really meant this... */ ...changed code
here...

or:

/* FIXME: new code that *may* break something else... */ ...new code here...

Note: If you make it clear that this may or may not be a "good thing (tm)", it
will be easier to identify and include in the project (or conversely exclude
from the project).

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4.8. Addendum: Template for files and function comment blocks:

Example for file comments:

const char FILENAME_rcs[] = "$Id: developer-manual.sgml,v 2.13 2007/10/30 17:59:31 fabiankeil Exp $";
/*********************************************************************
 *
 * File        :  $Source$
 *
 * Purpose     :  (Fill me in with a good description!)
 *
 * Copyright   :  Written by and Copyright (C) 2001-2007 the SourceForge
 *                Privoxy team. http://www.privoxy.org/
 *
 *                Based on the Internet Junkbuster originally written
 *                by and Copyright (C) 1997 Anonymous Coders and
 *                Junkbusters Corporation.  http://www.junkbusters.com
 *
 *                This program is free software; you can redistribute it
 *                and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
 *                Public License as published by the Free Software
 *                Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
 *                your option) any later version.
 *
 *                This program is distributed in the hope that it will
 *                be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
 *                implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
 *                PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public
 *                License for more details.
 *
 *                The GNU General Public License should be included with
 *                this file.  If not, you can view it at
 *                http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
 *                or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
 *                51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 ,
 *                USA
 *
 * Revisions   :
 *    $Log$
 *
 *********************************************************************/


#include "config.h"

   ...necessary include files for us to do our work...

const char FILENAME_h_rcs[] = FILENAME_H_VERSION;


Note: This declares the rcs variables that should be added to the
"show-proxy-args" page. If this is a brand new creation by you, you are free to
change the "Copyright" section to represent the rights you wish to maintain.

Note: The formfeed character that is present right after the comment flower box
is handy for (X|GNU)Emacs users to skip the verbiage and get to the heart of
the code (via `forward-page' and `backward-page'). Please include it if you
can.

Example for file header comments:

#ifndef _FILENAME_H
#define _FILENAME_H
#define FILENAME_H_VERSION "$Id: developer-manual.sgml,v 2.13 2007/10/30 17:59:31 fabiankeil Exp $"
/*********************************************************************
 *
 * File        :  $Source$
 *
 * Purpose     :  (Fill me in with a good description!)
 *
 * Copyright   :  Written by and Copyright (C) 2001-2007 the SourceForge
 *                Privoxy team. http://www.privoxy.org/
 *
 *                Based on the Internet Junkbuster originally written
 *                by and Copyright (C) 1997 Anonymous Coders and
 *                Junkbusters Corporation.  http://www.junkbusters.com
 *
 *                This program is free software; you can redistribute it
 *                and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
 *                Public License as published by the Free Software
 *                Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
 *                your option) any later version.
 *
 *                This program is distributed in the hope that it will
 *                be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
 *                implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
 *                PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public
 *                License for more details.
 *
 *                The GNU General Public License should be included with
 *                this file.  If not, you can view it at
 *                http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
 *                or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
 *                51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 ,
 *                USA
 *
 * Revisions   :
 *    $Log$
 *
 *********************************************************************/


#include "project.h"

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" {
#endif

   ... function headers here ...


/* Revision control strings from this header and associated .c file */
extern const char FILENAME_rcs[];
extern const char FILENAME_h_rcs[];


#ifdef __cplusplus
} /* extern "C" */
#endif

#endif /* ndef _FILENAME_H */

/*
  Local Variables:
  tab-width: 3
  end:
*/


Example for function comments:

/*********************************************************************
 *
 * Function    :  FUNCTION_NAME
 *
 * Description :  (Fill me in with a good description!)
 *
 * parameters  :
 *          1  :  param1 = pointer to an important thing
 *          2  :  x      = pointer to something else
 *
 * Returns     :  0 => Ok, everything else is an error.
 *
 *********************************************************************/
int FUNCTION_NAME( void *param1, const char *x )
{
   ...
   return( 0 );

}


Note: If we all follow this practice, we should be able to parse our code to
create a "self-documenting" web page.

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5. Testing Guidelines

To be filled.

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5.1. Testplan for releases

Explain release numbers. major, minor. developer releases. etc.

 1. Remove any existing rpm with rpm -e

 2. Remove any file that was left over. This includes (but is not limited to)

      □ /var/log/privoxy

      □ /etc/privoxy

      □ /usr/sbin/privoxy

      □ /etc/init.d/privoxy

      □ /usr/doc/privoxy*

 3. Install the rpm. Any error messages?

 4. start,stop,status Privoxy with the specific script (e.g. /etc/rc.d/init/
    privoxy stop). Reboot your machine. Does autostart work?

 5. Start browsing. Does Privoxy work? Logfile written?

 6. Remove the rpm. Any error messages? All files removed?

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5.2. Test reports

Please submit test reports only with the test form at sourceforge. Three simple
steps:

  • Select category: the distribution you test on.

  • Select group: the version of Privoxy that we are about to release.

  • Fill the Summary and Detailed Description with something intelligent (keep
    it short and precise).

Do not mail to the mailing list (we cannot keep track on issues there).

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6. Releasing a New Version

When we release versions of Privoxy, our work leaves our cozy secret lab and
has to work in the cold RealWorld[tm]. Once it is released, there is no way to
call it back, so it is very important that great care is taken to ensure that
everything runs fine, and not to introduce problems in the very last minute.

So when releasing a new version, please adhere exactly to the procedure
outlined in this chapter.

The following programs are required to follow this process: ncftpput (ncftp),
scp, ssh (ssh), gmake (GNU's version of make), autoconf, cvs.

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6.1. Version numbers

First you need to determine which version number the release will have. Privoxy
version numbers consist of three numbers, separated by dots, like in X.Y.Z
(e.g. 3.0.0), where:

  • X, the version major, is rarely ever changed. It is increased by one if
    turning a development branch into stable substantially changes the
    functionality, user interface or configuration syntax. Majors 1 and 2 were
    Junkbuster, and 3 will be the first stable Privoxy release.

  • Y, the version minor, represents the branch within the major version. At
    any point in time, there are two branches being maintained: The stable
    branch, with an even minor, say, 2N, in which no functionality is being
    added and only bug-fixes are made, and 2N+1, the development branch, in
    which the further development of Privoxy takes place. This enables us to
    turn the code upside down and inside out, while at the same time providing
    and maintaining a stable version. The minor is reset to zero (and one) when
    the major is incremented. When a development branch has matured to the
    point where it can be turned into stable, the old stable branch 2N is given
    up (i.e. no longer maintained), the former development branch 2N+1 becomes
    the new stable branch 2N+2, and a new development branch 2N+3 is opened.

  • Z, the point or sub version, represents a release of the software within a
    branch. It is therefore incremented immediately before each code freeze. In
    development branches, only the even point versions correspond to actual
    releases, while the odd ones denote the evolving state of the sources on
    CVS in between. It follows that Z is odd on CVS in development branches
    most of the time. There, it gets increased to an even number immediately
    before a code freeze, and is increased to an odd number again immediately
    thereafter. This ensures that builds from CVS snapshots are easily
    distinguished from released versions. The point version is reset to zero
    when the minor changes.

    Stable branches work a little differently, since there should be little to
    no development happening in such branches. Remember, only bugfixes, which
    presumably should have had some testing before being committed. Stable
    branches will then have their version reported as 0.0.0, during that period
    between releases when changes are being added. This is to denote that this
    code is not for release. Then as the release nears, the version is bumped
    according: e.g. 3.0.1 -> 0.0.0 -> 3.0.2.

In summary, the main CVS trunk is the development branch where new features are
being worked on for the next stable series. This should almost always be where
the most activity takes place. There is always at least one stable branch from
the trunk, e.g now it is 3.0, which is only used to release stable versions.
Once the initial *.0 release of the stable branch has been done, then as a
rule, only bugfixes that have had prior testing should be committed to the
stable branch. Once there are enough bugfixes to justify a new release, the
version of this branch is again incremented Example: 3.0.0 -> 3.0.1 -> 3.0.2,
etc are all stable releases from within the stable branch. 3.1.x is currently
the main trunk, and where work on 3.2.x is taking place. If any questions,
please post to the devel list before committing to a stable branch!

Developers should remember too that if they commit a bugfix to the stable
branch, this will more than likely require a separate submission to the main
trunk, since these are separate development trees within CVS. If you are
working on both, then this would require at least two separate check outs (i.e
main trunk, and the stable release branch, which is v_3_0_branch at the
moment).

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6.2. Before the Release: Freeze

The following must be done by one of the developers prior to each new release.

  • Make sure that everybody who has worked on the code in the last couple of
    days has had a chance to yell "no!" in case they have pending changes/fixes
    in their pipelines. Announce the freeze so that nobody will interfere with
    last minute changes.

  • Increment the version number (point from odd to even in development
    branches!) in configure.in. (RPM spec files will need to be incremented as
    well.)

  • If default.action has changed since last release (i.e. software release or
    standalone actions file release), bump up its version info to A.B in this
    line:

      {+add-header{X-Actions-File-Version: A.B} -filter -no-popups}


    Then change the version info in doc/webserver/actions/index.php, line:
    '$required_actions_file_version = "A.B";'

  • All documentation should be rebuild after the version bump. Finished docs
    should be then be committed to CVS (for those without the ability to build
    these). Some docs may require rather obscure processing tools. config, the
    man page (and the html version of the man page), and the PDF docs fall in
    this category. REAMDE, the man page, AUTHORS, and config should all also be
    committed to CVS for other packagers. The formal docs should be uploaded to
    the webserver. See the Section "Updating the webserver" in this manual for
    details.

  • The User Manual is also used for context sensitive help for the CGI editor.
    This is version sensitive, so that the user will get appropriate help for
    his/her release. So with each release a fresh version should be uploaded to
    the webserver (this is in addition to the main User Manual link from the
    main page since we need to keep manuals for various versions available).
    The CGI pages will link to something like http://privoxy.org/$(VERSION)/
    user-manual/. This will need to be updated for each new release. There is
    no Makefile target for this at this time!!! It needs to be done manually.

  • All developers should look at the ChangeLog and make sure noteworthy
    changes are referenced.

  • Commit all files that were changed in the above steps!

  • Tag all files in CVS with the version number with "cvs tag v_X_Y_Z". Don't
    use vX_Y_Z, ver_X_Y_Z, v_X.Y.Z (won't work) etc.

  • If the release was in a development branch, increase the point version from
    even to odd (X.Y.(Z+1)) again in configure.in and commit your change.

  • On the webserver, copy the user manual to a new top-level directory called
    X.Y.Z. This ensures that help links from the CGI pages, which have the
    version as a prefix, will go into the right version of the manual. If this
    is a development branch release, also symlink X.Y.(Z-1) to X.Y.Z and X.Y.
    (Z+1) to . (i.e. dot).

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3. Building and Releasing the Packages

Now the individual packages can be built and released. Note that for GPL
reasons the first package to be released is always the source tarball.

For all types of packages, including the source tarball, you must make sure
that you build from clean sources by exporting the right version from CVS into
an empty directory (just press return when asked for a password):

  mkdir dist # delete or choose different name if it already exists
  cd dist
  cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa login
  cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa export -r v_X_Y_Z current


Do NOT change a single bit, including, but not limited to version information
after export from CVS. This is to make sure that all release packages, and with
them, all future bug reports, are based on exactly the same code.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                   Warning                                   │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│Every significant release of Privoxy has included at least one package that  │
│either had incorrect versions of files, missing files, or incidental         │
│leftovers from a previous build process that gave unknown numbers of users   │
│headaches to try to figure out what was wrong. PLEASE, make sure you are     │
│using pristene sources, and are following the prescribed process!            │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Please find additional instructions for the source tarball and the individual
platform dependent binary packages below. And details on the Sourceforge
release process below that.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.1. Note on Privoxy Packaging

Please keep these general guidelines in mind when putting together your
package. These apply to all platforms!

  • Privoxy requires write access to: all *.action files, all logfiles, and the
    trust file. You will need to determine the best way to do this for your
    platform.

  • Please include up to date documentation. At a bare minimum:

    LICENSE (top-level directory)

    README (top-level directory)

    AUTHORS (top-level directory)

    man page (top-level directory, Unix-like platforms only)

    The User Manual (doc/webserver/user-manual/)

    FAQ (doc/webserver/faq/)

    Also suggested: Developer Manual (doc/webserver/developer-manual) and
    ChangeLog (top-level directory). FAQ and the manuals are HTML docs. There
    are also text versions in doc/text/ which could conceivably also be
    included.

    The documentation has been designed such that the manuals are linked to
    each other from parallel directories, and should be packaged that way.
    privoxy-index.html can also be included and can serve as a focal point for
    docs and other links of interest (and possibly renamed to index.html). This
    should be one level up from the manuals. There is a link also on this page
    to an HTMLized version of the man page. To avoid 404 for this, it is in CVS
    as doc/webserver/man-page/privoxy-man-page.html, and should be included
    along with the manuals. There is also a css stylesheets that can be
    included for better presentation: p_doc.css. This should be in the same
    directory with privoxy-index.html, (i.e. one level up from the manual
    directories).

  • user.action and user.filter are designed for local preferences. Make sure
    these do not get overwritten! config should not be overwritten either. This
    has especially important configuration data in it. trust should be left in
    tact as well.

  • Other configuration files (default.action, default.filter and
    standard.action) should be installed as the new defaults, but all
    previously installed configuration files should be preserved as backups.
    This is just good manners :-) These files are likely to change between
    releases and contain important new features and bug fixes.

  • Please check platform specific notes in this doc, if you haven't done
    "Privoxy" packaging before for other platform specific issues. Conversely,
    please add any notes that you know are important for your platform (or
    contact one of the doc maintainers to do this if you can't).

  • Packagers should do a "clean" install of their package after building it.
    So any previous installs should be removed first to ensure the integrity of
    the newly built package. Then run the package for a while to make sure
    there are no obvious problems, before uploading.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.2. Source Tarball

First, make sure that you have freshly exported the right version into an empty
directory. (See "Building and releasing packages" above). Then run:

  cd current
  autoheader && autoconf && ./configure


Then do:

  make tarball-dist


To upload the package to Sourceforge, simply issue

  make tarball-upload


Go to the displayed URL and release the file publicly on Sourceforge. For the
change log field, use the relevant section of the ChangeLog file.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.3. SuSE, Conectiva or Red Hat RPM

In following text, replace dist with either "rh" for Red Hat or "suse" for
SuSE.

First, make sure that you have freshly exported the right version into an empty
directory. (See "Building and releasing packages" above).

As the only exception to not changing anything after export from CVS, now
examine the file privoxy-dist.spec and make sure that the version information
and the RPM release number are correct. The RPM release numbers for each
version start at one. Hence it must be reset to one if this is the first RPM
for dist which is built from version X.Y.Z. Check the file list if unsure.
Else, it must be set to the highest already available RPM release number for
that version plus one.

Then run:

  cd current
  autoheader && autoconf && ./configure


Then do

  make dist-dist


To upload the package to Sourceforge, simply issue

  make dist-upload rpm_packagerev


where rpm_packagerev is the RPM release number as determined above. Go to the
displayed URL and release the file publicly on Sourceforge. Use the release
notes and change log from the source tarball package.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.4. OS/2

First, make sure that you have freshly exported the right version into an empty
directory. (See "Building and releasing packages" above). Then get the OS/2
Setup module:

  cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co os2setup


You will need a mix of development tools. The main compilation takes place with
IBM Visual Age C++. Some ancillary work takes place with GNU tools, available
from various sources like hobbes.nmsu.edu. Specificially, you will need
autoheader, autoconf and sh tools. The packaging takes place with WarpIN,
available from various sources, including its home page: xworkplace.

Change directory to the os2setup directory. Edit the os2build.cmd file to set
the final executable filename. For example,

  installExeName='privoxyos2_setup_X.Y.Z.exe'


Next, edit the IJB.wis file so the release number matches in the PACKAGEID
section:

  PACKAGEID="Privoxy Team\Privoxy\Privoxy Package\X\Y\Z"


You're now ready to build. Run:

  os2build


You will find the WarpIN-installable executable in the ./files directory.
Upload this anonymously to uploads.sourceforge.net/incoming, create a release
for it, and you're done. Use the release notes and Change Log from the source
tarball package.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.5. Solaris

Login to Sourceforge's compilefarm via ssh:

  ssh cf.sourceforge.net


Choose the right operating system (not the Debian one). When logged in, make
sure that you have freshly exported the right version into an empty directory.
(See "Building and releasing packages" above). Then run:

  cd current
  autoheader && autoconf && ./configure


Then run

  gmake solaris-dist


which creates a gzip'ed tar archive. Sadly, you cannot use make solaris-upload
on the Sourceforge machine (no ncftpput). You now have to manually upload the
archive to Sourceforge's ftp server and release the file publicly. Use the
release notes and Change Log from the source tarball package.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.6. Windows

You should ensure you have the latest version of Cygwin (from http://
www.cygwin.com/). Run the following commands from within a Cygwin bash shell.

First, make sure that you have freshly exported the right version into an empty
directory. (See "Building and releasing packages" above). Then get the Windows
setup module:

  cvs -z3  -d:pserver:anonymous@ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co winsetup


Then you can build the package. This is fully automated, and is controlled by
winsetup/GNUmakefile. All you need to do is:

  cd winsetup
  make


Now you can manually rename privoxy_setup.exe to privoxy_setup_X_Y_Z.exe, and
upload it to SourceForge. When releasing the package on SourceForge, use the
release notes and Change Log from the source tarball package.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.7. Debian

First, make sure that you have freshly exported the right version into an empty
directory. (See "Building and releasing packages" above). Then add a log entry
to debian/changelog, if it is not already there, for example by running:

  debchange -v 3.0.7-beta-1 "New upstream version"


Then, run:

  dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc -b


This will create ../privoxy_3.0.7-beta-1_i386.deb which can be uploaded. To
upload the package to Sourceforge, simply issue

  make debian-upload


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.8. Mac OSX

First, make sure that you have freshly exported the right version into an empty
directory. (See "Building and releasing packages" above). Then get the Mac OSX
setup module:

  cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@ijbswa.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ijbswa co osxsetup


Then run:

  cd osxsetup
  build


This will run autoheader, autoconf and configure as well as make. Finally, it
will copy over the necessary files to the ./osxsetup/files directory for
further processing by PackageMaker.

Bring up PackageMaker with the PrivoxyPackage.pmsp definition file, modify the
package name to match the release, and hit the "Create package" button. If you
specify ./Privoxy.pkg as the output package name, you can then create the
distributable zip file with the command:

  zip -r privoxyosx_setup_x.y.z.zip Privoxy.pkg


You can then upload privoxyosx_setup_x.y.z.zip anonymously to
uploads.sourceforge.net/incoming, create a release for it, and you're done. Use
the release notes and Change Log from the source tarball package.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.9. FreeBSD

Login to Sourceforge's compile-farm via ssh:

  ssh cf.sourceforge.net


Choose the right operating system. When logged in, make sure that you have
freshly exported the right version into an empty directory. (See "Building and
releasing packages" above). Then run:

  cd current
  autoheader && autoconf && ./configure


Then run:

  gmake freebsd-dist


which creates a gzip'ed tar archive. Sadly, you cannot use make freebsd-upload
on the Sourceforge machine (no ncftpput). You now have to manually upload the
archive to Sourceforge's ftp server and release the file publicly. Use the
release notes and Change Log from the source tarball package.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.10. HP-UX 11

First, make sure that you have freshly exported the right version into an empty
directory. (See "Building and releasing packages" above). Then run:

  cd current
  autoheader && autoconf && ./configure


Then do FIXME.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.11. Amiga OS

First, make sure that you have freshly exported the right version into an empty
directory. (See "Building and releasing packages" above). Then run:

  cd current
  autoheader && autoconf && ./configure


Then do FIXME.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.3.12. AIX

Login to Sourceforge's compilefarm via ssh:

  ssh cf.sourceforge.net


Choose the right operating system. When logged in, make sure that you have
freshly exported the right version into an empty directory. (See "Building and
releasing packages" above). Then run:

  cd current
  autoheader && autoconf && ./configure


Then run:

  make aix-dist


which creates a gzip'ed tar archive. Sadly, you cannot use make aix-upload on
the Sourceforge machine (no ncftpput). You now have to manually upload the
archive to Sourceforge's ftp server and release the file publicly. Use the
release notes and Change Log from the source tarball package.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

6.4. Uploading and Releasing Your Package

After the package is ready, it is time to upload it to SourceForge, and go
through the release steps. The upload is done via FTP:

  • Upload to: ftp://upload.sourceforge.net/incoming

  • user: anonymous

  • password: ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net

Or use the make targets as described above.

Once this done go to http://sourceforge.net/project/admin/editpackages.php?
group_id=11118, making sure you are logged in. Find your target platform in the
second column, and click Add Release. You will then need to create a new
release for your package, using the format of $VERSION ($CODE_STATUS), e.g.
3.0.7 (beta).

Now just follow the prompts. Be sure to add any appropriate Release notes. You
should see your freshly uploaded packages in "Step 2. Add Files To This
Release". Check the appropriate box(es). Remember at each step to hit the
"Refresh/Submit" buttons! You should now see your file(s) listed in Step 3.
Fill out the forms with the appropriate information for your platform, being
sure to hit "Update" for each file. If anyone is monitoring your platform,
check the "email" box at the very bottom to notify them of the new package.
This should do it!

If you have made errors, or need to make changes, you can go through
essentially the same steps, but select Edit Release, instead of Add Release.

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6.5. After the Release

When all (or: most of the) packages have been uploaded and made available, send
an email to the announce mailing list, Subject: "Version X.Y.Z available for
download". Be sure to include the download location, the release notes and the
Changelog. Also, post an updated News item on the project page Sourceforge, and
update the Home page and docs linked from the Home page (see below). Other news
sites and release oriented sites, such as Freshmeat, should also be notified.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

7. Update the Webserver

The webserver should be updated at least with each stable release. When
updating, please follow these steps to make sure that no broken links,
inconsistent contents or permission problems will occur (as it has many times
in the past!):

If you have changed anything in the stable-branch documentation source SGML
files, do:

  make dok dok-pdf # (or 'make redhat-dok dok-pdf' if 'make dok' doesn't work for you)


That will generate doc/webserver/user-manual, doc/webserver/developer-manual,
doc/webserver/faq, doc/pdf/*.pdf and doc/webserver/index.html automatically.

If you changed the manual page sources, generate doc/webserver/man-page/
privoxy-man-page.html by running "make man". (This is a separate target due to
dependencies on some obscure perl scripts [now in CVS, but not well tested].
See comments in GNUmakefile.)

If you want to add new files to the webserver, create them locally in the doc/
webserver/* directory (or create new directories under doc/webserver).

Next, commit any changes from the above steps to CVS. All set? If these are
docs in the stable branch, then do:

  make webserver


This will do the upload to the webserver (www.privoxy.org) and ensure all files
and directories there are group writable.

Please do NOT use any other means of transferring files to the webserver to
avoid permission problems. Also, please do not upload docs from development
branches or versions. The publicly posted docs should be in sync with the last
official release.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

8. Contacting the developers, Bug Reporting and Feature Requests

We value your feedback. In fact, we rely on it to improve Privoxy and its
configuration. However, please note the following hints, so we can provide you
with the best support:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

8.1. Get Support

For casual users, our support forum at SourceForge is probably best suited:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=211118

All users are of course welcome to discuss their issues on the users mailing
list, where the developers also hang around.

Note that the Privoxy mailing lists are moderated. Posts from unsubscribed
addresses have to be accepted manually by a moderator. This may cause a delay
of several days and if you use a subject that doesn't clearly mention Privoxy
or one of its features, your message may be accidentally discarded as spam.

If you aren't subscribed, you should therefore spend a few seconds to come up
with a proper subject. Additionally you should make it clear that you want to
get CC'd. Otherwise some responses will be directed to the mailing list only,
and you won't see them.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

8.2. Reporting Problems

"Problems" for our purposes, come in two forms:

  • Configuration issues, such as ads that slip through, or sites that don't
    function properly due to one Privoxy "action" or another being turned "on".

  • "Bugs" in the programming code that makes up Privoxy, such as that might
    cause a crash.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

8.2.1. Reporting Ads or Other Configuration Problems

Please send feedback on ads that slipped through, innocent images that were
blocked, sites that don't work properly, and other configuration related
problem of default.action file, to http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=
11118&atid=460288, the Actions File Tracker.

New, improved default.action files may occasionally be made available based on
your feedback. These will be announced on the ijbswa-announce list and
available from our the files section of our project page.

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8.2.2. Reporting Bugs

Please report all bugs through our bug tracker: http://sourceforge.net/tracker
/?group_id=11118&atid=111118.

Before doing so, please make sure that the bug has not already been submitted
and observe the additional hints at the top of the submit form. If already
submitted, please feel free to add any info to the original report that might
help to solve the issue.

Please try to verify that it is a Privoxy bug, and not a browser or site bug or
documented behaviour that just happens to be different than what you expected.
If unsure, try toggling off Privoxy, and see if the problem persists.

If you are using your own custom configuration, please try the stock configs to
see if the problem is configuration related. If you're having problems with a
feature that is disabled by default, please ask around on the mailing list if
others can reproduce the problem.

If you aren't using the latest Privoxy version, the bug may have been found and
fixed in the meantime. We would appreciate if you could take the time to
upgrade to the latest version (or even the latest CVS snapshot) and verify that
your bug still exists.

Please be sure to provide the following information:

  • The exact Privoxy version you are using (if you got the source from CVS,
    please also provide the source code revisions as shown in http://
    config.privoxy.org/show-version).

  • The operating system and versions you run Privoxy on, (e.g. Windows XP
    SP2), if you are using a Unix flavor, sending the output of "uname -a"
    should do, in case of GNU/Linux, please also name the distribution.

  • The name, platform, and version of the browser you were using (e.g.
    Internet Explorer v5.5 for Mac).

  • The URL where the problem occurred, or some way for us to duplicate the
    problem (e.g. http://somesite.example.com/?somethingelse=123).

  • Whether your version of Privoxy is one supplied by the Privoxy developers
    via SourceForge, or if you got your copy somewhere else.

  • Whether you are using Privoxy in tandem with another proxy such as Tor. If
    so, please temporary disable the other proxy to see if the symptoms change.

  • Whether you are using a personal firewall product. If so, does Privoxy work
    without it?

  • Any other pertinent information to help identify the problem such as config
    or log file excerpts (yes, you should have log file entries for each action
    taken).

You don't have to tell us your actual name when filing a problem report, but
please use a nickname so we can differentiate between your messages and the
ones entered by other "anonymous" users that may respond to your request if
they have the same problem or already found a solution.

Please also check the status of your request a few days after submitting it, as
we may request additional information. If you use a SF id, you should
automatically get a mail when someone responds to your request.

The appendix of the Privoxy User Manual also has helpful information on
understanding actions, and action debugging.

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8.3. Request New Features

You are welcome to submit ideas on new features or other proposals for
improvement through our feature request tracker at http://sourceforge.net/
tracker/?atid=361118&group_id=11118.

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8.4. Other

For any other issues, feel free to use the mailing lists. Technically
interested users and people who wish to contribute to the project are also
welcome on the developers list! You can find an overview of all Privoxy-related
mailing lists, including list archives, at: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?
group_id=11118.

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9. Privoxy Copyright, License and History

Copyright   2001-2007 by Privoxy Developers <
ijbswa-developers@lists.sourceforge.net>

Some source code is based on code Copyright   1997 by Anonymous Coders and
Junkbusters, Inc. and licensed under the GNU General Public License.

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9.1. License

Privoxy is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as published by the Free
Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details, which
is available from the Free Software Foundation, Inc, 51 Franklin Street, Fifth
Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the

 Free Software
 Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
 Boston, MA 02110-1301
 USA 

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9.2. History

A long time ago, there was the Internet Junkbuster, by Anonymous Coders and
Junkbusters Corporation. This saved many users a lot of pain in the early days
of web advertising and user tracking.

But the web, its protocols and standards, and with it, the techniques for
forcing ads on users, give up autonomy over their browsing, and for tracking
them, keeps evolving. Unfortunately, the Internet Junkbuster did not. Version
2.0.2, published in 1998, was (and is) the last official release available from
Junkbusters Corporation. Fortunately, it had been released under the GNU GPL,
which allowed further development by others.

So Stefan Waldherr started maintaining an improved version of the software, to
which eventually a number of people contributed patches. It could already
replace banners with a transparent image, and had a first version of pop-up
killing, but it was still very closely based on the original, with all its
limitations, such as the lack of HTTP/1.1 support, flexible per-site
configuration, or content modification. The last release from this effort was
version 2.0.2-10, published in 2000.

Then, some developers picked up the thread, and started turning the software
inside out, upside down, and then reassembled it, adding many new features
along the way.

The result of this is Privoxy, whose first stable version, 3.0, was released
August, 2002.

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10. See also

Other references and sites of interest to Privoxy users:

http://www.privoxy.org/, the Privoxy Home page.

http://www.privoxy.org/faq/, the Privoxy FAQ.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/, the Project Page for Privoxy on
SourceForge.

http://config.privoxy.org/, the web-based user interface. Privoxy must be
running for this to work. Shortcut: http://p.p/

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11118&atid=460288, to submit "misses"
and other configuration related suggestions to the developers.

http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html, an explanation how cookies are
used to track web users.

http://www.junkbusters.com/ijb.html, the original Internet Junkbuster.

http://privacy.net/, a useful site to check what information about you is
leaked while you browse the web.

http://www.squid-cache.org/, a popular caching proxy, which is often used
together with Privoxy.

http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/, Polipo is a caching proxy with
advanced features like pipelining, multiplexing and caching of partial
instances. In many setups it can be used as Squid replacement.

http://tor.eff.org/, Tor can help anonymize web browsing, web publishing,
instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications.

http://www.privoxy.org/developer-manual/, the Privoxy developer manual.